USA G2: Estoril

I owe an apology to Mark Carty - sorry dude for tapping you in turn 1. I watched the reply and it spun you around, and you didn't move after that. Did your car die? I didn't hit you hard, just a tap. I waited for you to catch up, but didn't see you after a few cars passed me.

Anyway, regardless, very sorry for the tap.

Otherwise it was a very fun race. Lot's of cars together and racing each other. Thanks guys!

Finally i got my g25 wheel so i made a debut. Unfortunetly my engine blew again with that biturbo and that was very dissapointed just wonder why it happened for the third time to me. Before that the car was just great to drive despite a small mistake i made at the begining. Then i lost the lead and was running behind Heinz but i was going faster and faster and then bummmmm!!!
well i will try next time . Congr to the winners!!!!

First of all ..... wel done Steve on another championship. You are really doing great in S6 m8. And also grats to CanAm for winning the teamchampionship. Thanks to me I must admit shamefully. (Barry ... I have paypal) :-)

Why? Because this stupid ass forgot to check his setup and because of that overlooked the amount of stops was at 0. So my always loyal crew asked me to cut the engine so they could refuel. That mistake must have cost me about 15 secs and made me lose valuable positions to Garret and Dennis. Now we lost the championship with a lousy 2 points. Doing a right stop might have made the difference. On the other hand ... things could have been much worse when the battle for the championship between Steve and Tom was almost pre-decided in a get-together with Rob in the uphill chicane. Steve got out better than Tom and secured a great 3rd in the endresult and the win in the championship.

More next week .... when we do the final of G3. That's gonna be 2 races into one.

No problem Jason it happens,I was a moving chicane out there anyway.I just got my G25 as well and trying to get up to speed with it and like a dummy forgot to map the ignition button so I could'nt restart,duhh.

Yeah, George, I'm not very happy about that situation with Rob. I sat on my roof for what seemed like 2 years (probably 10 seconds) and had to work back from 12th...

I'm not sure what was wrong with me tonight, I was a nervous wreck in qualifying and didn't go as fast as I knew it was possible to. Somehow stayed in 8th, and worked past some people after some craziness at the start and was running 4th. My plan was to run steady and let everyone else pit around me. Then I'd be out front at the end. That was the plan...yeah, right. So, I was racing with Estaban, and I was passing on the inside, and he pulled down on me I think and I spun. That's how I got back with Steve and Rob. Then we had the incident in the chicane. I had a little race with Eric Marecki, and finally got away from it and got by everyone as they pitted. I was still bent on not pitting and catching Steve. I was just in that process, catching by almost 2 seconds a lap, when Esteban and Heinz caught me. My tires were SHOT, I had 5 warnings that they were worn, and I was just tossing it around trying to stay on pace-ish.

Congratulations, Steve. Very nicely done, you ran a better race than me and earned it. And congrats to Heinz, as well. And, thirdly, to CanAm. We did it!! :)

It was a fun race!
But there was no way I would have made it to the end without a pit stop.

...And good battle there Heinz, it kept me busy the whole race.

I have so many mixed feelings about this one...

Season debutants Eric and Esteban were in this one for the final, and starting upsetting the balance in Quali. I was very happy to come out with a 3rd in Quali and was hoping to use it to my advantage.

Eric was ripping he engine apart on the grid, and when the lights went green his launch was bad.. I was laughing all the way down to T1.

Was trying to hassle Maciej in Stint 1, and eventually he started making mistakes and then I ended up in the lead.

I started Howling when i noticed Steve was all the way back in 7th and Tomo in 5th or something.. Howling!!!!

Then the battle with Esteban really destroyed my tires, but had a very good battle and race with him, couldnt let him passed for the sake of my championship.. i started watching who was pitting with interest, Esteban pitted and it was a do or die.. Do and loose the win because i knew Eric, Steve and tomo wouldnt pit, and chase like a banshee, or Die and be caught by the pitters in the end and loose it anyway...

I came out the pits behind Esteban because i took longer to decide to pit or not and that cost me.

2 laps to go i had Tomo, who was really just trying to not let me passed, I eventually got a good run up the inside up to the chicane, but tomo came in and we touched.. I knew tomos tyres were screwed, but just wanted to show a little sportsmanship and slowed down for him, even though i should have soldiered on and gone after steve.. but it was too late anyway.

what a season

Congrats all, and Steve on taking the win... now i wish i had done 1 more race this season :p

Well done eric on keep that win on 1 set.. Brave man!

Jeeez, that was like fun... only different! Biggest exercise in restraint I've had to undertake in a while - downright painful!

Really hadn't had big hopes leading up to tonight, but did some offline laps in the Porsche and could hit 39.8 on full fuel and hards and 38.3 in qualifying trim. That seemed surprisingly quick to me, so I started feeling better about my odds. Planned on a no-stopper since I knew the Porsche had made it nonstop for me a couple of times this season. Plus, if I went into the pits, I might not find my way back out! ;-)

Just as soon as I got on track in online practice tonight, I knew it was going to be different than planned. My FPS were awful and it seemed like the grip was nowhere near what it had been offline - felt like a totally different sim. Still, my first and only practice hotlap was a 38.9, so I guessed it was just the FPS effect and I'd have to adapt to the gripless feel. All those old laps in GPL would come in handy tonight!

Tried to lay back in Q for a clear lap, but kept getting passed for some reason ;-) so never managed a decent runner and ended up 7th on the grid. Not what I'd hoped for, but it was going to be a long 45 minutes; you never know.

Got a monster race start and went from 7th to 3rd into T1. About time! Esteban got under me in the corner though, putting me back to 4th; no worries, plenty of time. Or so I thought; two turns later the lack of grip caught me out since I hadn't done any warmup laps on race setup, and I nailed Esteban from behind braking into the uphill right T4. I gritted my teeth praying he wouldn't go off and he didn't, so I was very relieved at that. But I DID, and was back to 10th by the time I got back on track. So much for my killer start.

After that it was mostly a matter of just trying to go as quick as I felt I could without pushing the tires too hard, since I knew if I did I'd be dead meat in the late going. Had a close door-rubbing dice with Rob early but chickened out of it figuring he'd be stopping in the BMW. Restraint... ;-)

Then it looked like Tom must've had some trouble up ahead since soon he came back to Rob and I and we got into a bit of a 3-way race with George right on our tails. Rob and he were going at it pretty hard, so I tried to use that for advantage. Looked like it might go as intended when Rob doored him wide and I followed through going into that awful Gancho chicane, but we accordioned up and Tom got into my rear, knocking me into Rob. Rob got sideways but collected it and jumped back on the gas to get away while I was more or less parked. Unfortunately, Tom had taken our loss of momentum to go around and Rob nailed him coming out of the turn. Probably surprised the heck out of both of 'em as they likely didn't see each other, and if their FPS was as bad as mine in that section we were all just hanging on for dear life anyway. End result of all that was me getting away from the corner in front of them, without too much damage to show for it.

From there it was a matter of letting stops cycle me up the order to 2nd. Didn't know who was ahead until after the race, but was amazed to see Eric do the full distance on one set of tires in the BMW; wouldn't have thought it possible. Very nice job!

Watched the gap ahead and behind and it was pretty stable, but at about 10 minutes to go I started getting tire warnings on my pit radio a couple of times a lap. Crap! I knew I'd been sliding around a lot more than I'd expected to from offline, but this wasn't looking good at all. Backed out of it a lot and the warnings got less frequent, but still wasn't sure I'd make it without a puncture until I came off the very last corner. Which I did in 3rd, having been passed with about a third of a lap to go by Esteban who had stopped for tires. Just might have held second but for getting balked a bit by lapped traffic that last lap, but no matter. I'd pretty much been walking on eggshells for the last half of the race trying to go as gently as I dared, and that had degraded to positively tiptoeing around at a crawl the last ten minutes. Heck, I couldn't wait for it to be over, win or lose. Was even hoping a tire would let go and put me out of my misery!

Like I said - like fun, but different! ;-)

Anywho, just want to say thanks to everyone in the series for the fun racing. It was an enjoyable season for me, with an unexpected and pleasant outcome.

Want to say sorry to my team for not making the race. I got home from our work xmas party in a sorry state and didnt even know what day it was, never mind that I had a race to do.

Congrats to Steve on winning the championship.

I love Steve's WALLS of text! Congrats!